Clean And Sober

Sarah Mason-Couch, a bright 16-year-old with a history of drug and
alcohol abuse, sat at a desk in an empty classroom picking at her
lunch, which consisted of leftover pizza, granola, a banana, carrot
slices, and celery stalks. The food was neatly packed in a purple
Sesame Street lunch box. "Alcohol is my drug of choice,'' she said, as
if she were describing her favorite ice cream flavor. "Hard alcohol.
Vodka. But I really got into hallucinogens, and I did a lot of
over-the-counters, like caffeine pills, Robitussin--anything I could
get. It was hard to get alcohol. It was a lot easier to get pot, or
acid, or just to drink Robitussin, NyQuil, rubbing alcohol.''

Sarah is a student at Recovery High School in Albuquerque, N.M.
Housed in a nondescript brown stucco building not far from the entrance
to the city's airport, the school opened three years ago as one of the
nation's first public high schools for recovering alcoholics and drug
abusers. Although ostensibly part of the Albuquerque Public Schools,
Recovery High was established with grant money from the Princeton,
N.J.-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Last year, however, the
startup money ran out, leaving a wary school district holding the bag.
Since then, the school--which currently serves about 75 students in
grades 9 through 12--has been hanging on for dear life.

Led by a tireless principal by the name of Jan Hayes, the school
offers regular classes, group therapy, and a 12-step recovery program
based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. To enroll, students
must sign a contract promising to stay clean and sober and to submit to
random drug tests. (The school is not set up to handle detoxification.)
There's a sort of reverse peer pressure that permeates the place;
students who have successfully kicked their habits encourage newcomers
to do the same.

"All of these kids are what we call 'poly drug users,' '' Hayes told
me. "It's not just alcohol. It's not just marijuana. It's a combination
of things. And they're in pretty bad shape when they first get here. In
fact, if you just look at them as you walk around, you can tell who's
new and who's not because their whole physical appearance changes after
they've been here for a while. They get smiles on their faces; they
begin to get a sense of humor. Their whole attitude changes.''

The students who attend Recovery High come from all over
Albuquerque. Many are current or former gang members. Some have been
arrested and were urged to enroll as a condition of their being on
probation. Others have been kicked out of their regular high schools.
The goal is to provide the students with the tools they need to stay
clean so they can return to their previous institutions without
relapsing. "The ones who do the best stay with us about 200 days,''
Hayes said. "We need about a year.'' Since it opened, the school has
served nearly 300 students.

For teenagers like Sarah, Recovery High is a lifesaver. "I would
literally be dead if not for the school,'' she said. "That's the
honest-to-God truth.'' Sarah first started drinking when she was 11; a
year or two later, she was addicted. "I always felt different. I always
felt sad. I always felt depressed. So I just needed something to make
it go away. And I found it.''

Sarah's problems with drugs and alcohol led to another addiction:
self-mutilation. "Alcohol and razor blades are not a good mix,'' she
said. As an honor-roll student at Albuquerque High School, Sarah kept
her demons well-hidden. "I told the counselor that I was using drugs,
and she didn't believe me. Nobody believed me. They said, 'Sarah,
you're too good a kid to do that.' ''

Finally, Sarah heard about Recovery High from a friend who was
attending the school. She went for a visit, liked what she saw, and, in
September 1993, enrolled as a student. "When I first came here,'' she
said, "I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror. And that's the
epitome of low self-esteem. And now I take a shower, I wash my hair,
and it's because I came here every day, and people said, 'Sarah, we
love you. Sarah, you're worth it.' And you learn it after a while. It's
very nurturing here. But it's also safe for people to confront you.
They're not afraid to do that.''

Last June, Sarah felt confident enough to leave Recovery High and
return to a regular high school, but two weeks later, she tried to kill
herself. She ended up at the state hospital in Las Vegas. When I spoke
with her, it was only her second day back at Recovery High, and she
seemed optimistic about her future. "It's possible to move on, even
when you've got a life like mine,'' she said. "The genuine happiness
I've felt in the last five or six months is so much better than the
best vodka blackout. I know that sounds sick! But it's so much better,
I would never want to get back into that life. And it's always an
option. I always could. But I'd rather not.''

Many schools, particularly private ones, like to bill themselves as
"communities,'' but few actually live up to that claim. Recovery High,
on the other hand, actually feels like a living, breathing community.
At least that was my impression during the two days that I visited the
school last February. Although the staff members had recently been
asked to take a pay cut, I found them to be unabashed in their praise
of the school. A number of students--even some of the newer
ones--credited the institution with turning their lives around. Some,
like Sarah, told me that they'd probably either be out on the streets
or dead if the school didn't exist. "For some of us,'' one girl told
me, "it's our last chance at anything in life.''

What makes Recovery High so special? Certainly not the school's
physical characteristics. The classrooms are small and have the usual
desks and blackboards. The overhead lights are fluorescent. The carpet
is industrial gray. One notable difference, however, is the scale of
the place; if anything, it feels more like an elementary school than a
high school. The intimate setting is no mistake.

"I'm a real believer that high schools shouldn't be too big,'' Hayes
said. "You get over 600, 700 kids, and you're shooting yourself in the
foot. You can't form a sense of community. And that's what this school
is about. Forming a sense of community. Mutual caring and trust.
Ownership in the school. Elementary schools can still do that, and some
middle schools can do that by breaking into 'pods.' But you can't do it
in a traditional high school. A lot of kids get lost.''

At Recovery High, students do much of their academic work on their
own, at their own pace, even when they are in class. Teachers lecture
occasionally, but, for the most part, they act as tutors, working with
students one on one. "The teachers here know a lot about you,'' one
student said, "so they know how to work with you. They don't push you
to do the work; they teach you responsibility. It shouldn't be their
responsibility to force you to work. You should want to do it for
yourself.'' Some students thrive in such an atmosphere; others find it
daunting, particularly at first.

The school is open from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. During that time,
students are not allowed to leave the campus. Not that there's anyone
forcing them to stay. The door is always open. But if a kid decides to
take off, he or she had better be prepared to do some explaining.

No one beats around the bush at Recovery High. Staff members have no
qualms about directly challenging a student regarding his or her
behavior, particularly if it is related to drugs or alcohol (and it
usually is). These encounters, however, do not take place behind closed
doors; for the most part, they are conducted at the daily 9 a.m.
"community meeting,'' during which all the students and staff members
gather in a circle in the school's largest room.

On the first day of my visit, the meeting was short and uneventful,
but on the second day, it was an entirely different affair.

Before the meeting got under way, someone unplugged the Coke machine
to help cut down on the noise. A girl wearing baggy blue jeans was,
inexplicably, eating from a jar of Gerber's baby food with a plastic
spoon. The assembly began in the usual way: Each student said his or
her name, followed by the date on which he or she last drank alcohol or
did drugs. (Some of the staff members are also recovering substance
abusers, so they, too, spoke up.)

"January 13th,'' said one student. "August 11th, 1994,'' said
another. And so on. As they went around the room, it became apparent
that while some of the students had been off drugs and alcohol for
months, many had only been clean and sober for weeks, days, or even
hours. A new student named Gary--a nervous-looking kid with
short-cropped hair, a wisp of a mustache, and what appeared to be knife
scars on his face--said "last night'' when his turn came. His tone was
matter-of-fact, not defiant.

After everyone had said his or her name and date, the student
leading the meeting opened the floor to "confrontations.'' During these
encounters, a teacher may challenge the behavior of a student, or a
student may question one of the school's strict rules. Everyone gets a
chance to speak his or her mind, but the school makes no pretense of
being a democracy. Ultimately, the staff members have the final
say.

Not surprisingly, the first confrontation on this particular morning
was directed at Gary, the new student. Jan Hayes wanted to know if the
boy was really committed to being at the school. "Are you sure you want
to be here?'' she asked. "Are you sure you want to quit using?''

"Yeah,'' he mumbled.

Another staff member asked him, "What is your drug of choice?''

"Pot,'' he replied.

When one of the teachers suggested that perhaps Gary wasn't ready
for the rigors of Recovery High, several students jumped to his
defense, pointing out that they, too, had a hard time staying clean
when they first enrolled. A girl named Angel, who was about to graduate
after having been at the school for nearly three years, said, "At least
he admitted that he used last night. We should give him credit for
that.'' Others nodded their heads in agreement.

The staff members, apparently satisfied that Gary had gotten the
message, moved on to other students.

Barbara Romero, the school's office manager, raised her hand and
said she had a question for Alicia, who had just returned to the school
after having been in and out several times before. "Why are you back?''
she asked bluntly.

Taken aback, the girl replied, "I think it's time to prove something
to myself, not to you guys.''

"I want to believe that,'' Romero said, "but that's exactly what you
said the last time.''

"You guys can believe what you want,'' Alicia said, "but I don't
have to prove anything to you--just to myself.''

Clearly, most of the teachers were skeptical. "I want to feel some
assurance that something is different this time,'' one said. "And I
want to know what you can offer this community.''

"You're really going to have to convince me,'' another said.

But Alicia didn't say anything. Sitting on the floor, she stared
blankly at the carpet.

"That's because I've been using for the last couple of weeks,'' she
said. "I was sick; I was throwing up blood.''

Hayes suggested that she get some medical attention as a condition
for her coming back to school; the girl agreed and promised to make an
appointment before the day was over. (The school used to have its own
medical clinic, complete with a part-time physician and a full-time
nurse practitioner. It was closed, however, due to budget cuts. Now,
medical services and individual therapy are provided by the University
of New Mexico's Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and
Addictions.)

The meeting lasted 70 minutes. Before it ended, one student admitted
to "partying'' the night before, and another confessed to relapsing on
speed and pot. One girl said she had noticed some Satanic symbols drawn
on another student's arm, which are expressly forbidden in the student
dress code. "That personally offends me,'' she said, "because I believe
in God.'' This led to a general discussion of the dress code, which
prohibits, among other things, gang-related clothes. Some students felt
the code was too strict, but Hayes was adamant. "Those are the rules,''
she said. "End of discussion.''

The idea for Recovery High came not from Albuquerque school
administrators but from a parent, Lou Sadler, whose son had been in and
out of drug-treatment programs. The son, however, found it difficult to
stay clean after returning to school, so his father formed a group
called Parents Against Drugs in order to address the problem. What they
came up with was a plan for an alternative high school expressly for
students with drug and alcohol problems. With a $75,000 planning grant
from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Sadler and his colleagues
wrote a 300-page proposal outlining their vision for such a school. In
April 1991, the foundation agreed to support the project, pledging
$800,000 for the first 18 months of operation. (It later contributed
another $800,000.) The Albuquerque Public Schools added $267,000 in
matching funds. Sadler, hired by the school district to be the project
coordinator, began searching for a building to house the school and a
staff to run it. Recovery High was scheduled to open its doors on Oct.
15, 1991.

By the time Jan Hayes was hired as the school's principal,
everything seemed to be in place. Then, word got out that Sadler had
lied on his résumé, claiming a college degree that he
didn't have. When the school district found out about it, Sadler was
fired, leaving the school's future in doubt. Hayes, who had left an
administrative position in Farmington, N.M., to take the job at
Recovery High, suddenly had her doubts about the venture. "I thought,
Boy, I didn't check into this job well enough!'' Hayes said. She
weathered the storm, however, and the school finally opened in February
1992, with a staff of 12 and a student body of three. Some school board
members wanted to give the school a suitably Southwestern
name--Mariposa High was one suggestion--but others felt that it was
important not to mince words. After all, the first step for anyone
involved in therapy is to admit there's a problem. Thus, candor
prevailed, and the school was officially dubbed Recovery High.

Hayes credits Sadler with laying a good foundation for the school,
but she admits that his résumé embellishment was "a
tremendous mistake.'' It didn't help matters when Sadler decided to
fight his dismissal by suing the city school system for breach of
contract. He lost the suit, but the incident cast a shadow over the
school that lingers to this day. "Some people never got over that,''
one school board member told me.

If Recovery High had a theme song, it would be "Staying Alive,'' for
that is what the school has managed to do--just barely--since the
startup money from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ran out last
December. (In February, the foundation kicked in an extra $100,000 so
the school could stay open through the end of May.) The school's board
of directors was supposed to have lined up enough outside funding to
keep the school going indefinitely, but that didn't happen.

The result is that the school district has had to come up with much
more money than it intended just to keep the school afloat. Several
school board members are not amused by the situation.

"It's a very expensive endeavor,'' said board member Agatha Lopez,
one of the school's most outspoken critics. "It's too expensive to be
funded just by us.''

"I've never been overly supportive of the program,'' said school
board president Bill Rothanbargar, "because it costs so much money per
child.'' Rothanbargar opposes the school for another reason: "Substance
abuse is more of a health problem than an educational problem. I'm not
sure that we should be in that business. You can't change these
children overnight.''

"It's a difficult program to justify,'' said deputy superin-

tendent George Bello, "because it takes money away from other school
programs.'' He pointed out that the average annual cost per student in
the Albuquerque Public Schools is approximately $2,500. For Recovery
High, however, the figure is somewhere between $5,000 and $6,000. "In a
budget that is already strapped,'' he said, "we just have a hard time
spending that much money per student.''

Jan Hayes has heard it all before, and her response is always the
same: Yes, Recovery High costs a lot of money to operate, but it's
worth every penny. "Particularly,'' she said, "compared with what would
happen if you leave these kids alone and don't give them any treatment
for recovery. You're going to end up spending a lot more money.''

Other Recovery High supporters, including parents and students, told
me the same thing. "You either pay for it now, or you pay for it
later,'' said Patricia Baca, whose daughter Kristen kicked her drug and
alcohol problems at the school and whose daughter Suzanne is currently
enrolled. "And if you pay for it later, it's going to be a lot more
expensive.''

When I spoke with Agatha Lopez, she told me that a school like
Recovery High wasn't fair to the other students in the school system,
the ones who go to school regularly, do their work, and stay out of
trouble. Why, she asked, should the district spend money on kids who
have taken--as she put it--"the wrong path,'' when those funds could go
for other school programs?

It's hard to argue for the existence of a school that costs twice as
much money per student as a regular high school. Yet most of the
students I spoke with told me that they wouldn't be in school at all if
they weren't going to Recovery High, and many of them said they were
scared to return to their regular high schools because of the easy
availability of drugs and alcohol. "In public schools, there are so
many drugs,'' one student told me. "You can't get sober. Every day,
there's someone walking up to you and saying, 'Let's do this, let's do
that.' '' Another student said, "This is the cleanest school I know
of.''

Clearly, you can't judge a school like Recovery High solely on the
basis of money. There's also the human element to consider. When I
asked Agatha Lopez if she had ever visited the school, she said, "No.''
Why not? I asked. "Because I work 40 hours a week,'' she replied. It
struck me as odd that a board member would condemn a school without
looking at it first.

Had she stepped foot in the place, she would have come face to face
with success stories like Ted Nichols, Heidi Mobbley, and Suzanne Baca
(Patricia Baca's daughter). I met with the three students in Jan Hayes'
office, and I was struck by their intelligence and their candor.

Ted is a skinny 16-year-old who has been at Recovery High since last
January. He wears his hair in tight braids that dangled as he spoke. He
first started smoking pot when he was 13. "The first time I got high,''
he said, "it was just the best feeling in the world. And I just wanted
to keep doing it because it felt so good. Slowly but surely, you start
to get addicted to it. And, for me, eventually it became a kind of
escape. You don't have to worry about your problems when you're high.
Life just feels good. But the reason I wanted to come here is because
it just wasn't doing that no more. I was just addicted to it.''

Eventually, Ted was doing so many drugs--"pot, acid, coke, meth,
anything I could get my hands on''--that he pretty much stopped going
to school altogether. "Bad things just started happening,'' he said. "I
knew I needed a change. I needed something to happen. My mom told me
about this school, and I told her I'd come. I felt that enough was
enough. I needed to get help. And seeing how this was basically a
school for addicts to recover, I knew this was probably the only place
that I could do that. Because at every other school I've been to, there
are drugs everywhere.''

Heidi, who was about to graduate when I met her, told a similar
story. A pretty 17-year-old with blond hair tied back in a bun, she
wore faded blue jeans, a maroon T-shirt, and a gold chain around her
neck. "I have six months and 14 days clean,'' she told me. "I was
basically an alcoholic. I mean, I would use pot, but alcohol was my
problem. I first started drinking in 5th grade. I would drink and get
drunk, but it wasn't an everyday thing. As time went on, it progressed,
and my self-esteem went down. A lot of things started happening. I
ended up in Heights [a private psychiatric hospital]. I was
suicidal.''

How much were you drinking? I asked.

"As much as my body could hold,'' she said. "A lot. It just got to
the point where I would drink so much that I would get alcohol
poisoning. I never learned from it. Every single weekend, I would end
up with alcohol poisoning. I'd just drink myself to death.''

It was Heidi's therapist who suggested she enroll at Recovery High.
"When I first got here,'' she said, "I didn't think I had a problem. It
took me about eight months to realize that I was an alcoholic.''

Heidi seemed very much at home at Recovery High. "It's the safest
place for me to come,'' she said. "I have my friends here.''

I asked her if she was nervous about leaving such a nurturing place.
"Oh, yes,'' she said. "It's very scary because I never imagined myself
graduating, you know what I'm saying? I'm graduating ahead of my class,
but when I came here I was a year behind my class. I caught up real
fast. My priorities started coming to me.'' Now, she has a data-entry
job lined up, and eventually she plans to go to college, perhaps to
become a therapist. "To help teens like me,'' she said.

Like Heidi, Suzanne--a talkative girl dressed in a black T-shirt and
baggy blue jeans--began drinking at an early age. "My grandpa gave me
my first drink when I was 10 years old,'' she said, tugging at a
crystal around her neck. "He gave me a shot of Seagram's 7, and it was
in a glass that was about that wide.'' She used her fingers to form a
large circle. "I had asked him for a drink one day, and he said, 'Well,
if you want to drink, you have to drink like a man.' So I took that
drink, and I'll never forget how it made me feel. I mean, I just felt
like this was it. No more problems. I didn't have to think about
anything. I could just run to the bottle. It helped me sleep. It helped
me get going in the morning. It helped me do everything I couldn't do
for myself, until finally it ran out. It didn't do the things that it
did for me anymore. It became a necessity for me to have it.''

After Suzanne got kicked out of several schools ("For fighting, not
going to class,'' she said), her mother asked her to consider enrolling
at Recovery High. "I finally told my mom, 'I'm ready. I need help,' ''
she said. "My mom knew about the school because my sister came here
before. She's still sober today, and that really gave me a lot of
hope.'' Suzanne, 17, has been a student at Recovery High since October
1993. She has no intention of going back to her old ways. "I plan to do
something with myself,'' she said. "I want to be a drug and alcohol
counselor.''

Teaching at Recovery High is not for the fainthearted. The students
are tough and suspicious of authority figures. They can erupt at the
smallest provocation. When, during one of the community meetings I
attended, a boy raised a girl's arm in the air as a joke, the girl
turned to him and yelled "FUCKER!'' at the top of her lungs. An awkward
silence came over the proceeding until Jan Hayes said to the girl,
"When you get upset, you use foul and abusive language. And I think you
need to work on that.'' Several teachers agreed. The girl said she'd
try to control her temper, but after the meeting, she took off and
didn't return for the rest of the day.

"You have to have a certain type of personality to work in a school
like this,'' Hayes told me.

Karla Schultz apparently has what it takes. Short and spunky, with
cropped black hair and piercing blue eyes, Schultz has taught English
at Recovery High since last September. "I love teaching at alternative
schools,'' she told me after one of her classes had ended. "I like that
the students are more experienced with the world, with life. I mean,
it's not always in the best way. But they've got a little living under
their belts, and I think that makes them more interesting and more
thoughtful. It's more of a challenge, though.''

I asked her how she felt at the end of the day. "It depends on the
day,'' she said. "When I first started working here, sometimes I would
go home, and I just couldn't get their stories, their life experiences,
out of my head. I'd have nightmares, I couldn't sleep. It was sort of
there all the time. And I thought, You can't do this all the time.
It'll just kill you. It'll drain you.'' Eventually, she realized that
she could be compassionate and caring with her students at school and
still have a life of her own at home. "Otherwise, you'll last two
months,'' she said. "I'm not sure where that comes from, except
practice.''

Patti Gronewald, who teaches math and science, also had a difficult
time at first. "I used to go home,'' she said, "and just curl up on the
couch into a little ball and say, 'Don't anybody talk to me!' Now, I go
home and I'm happy and I'm a normal person. I had to learn how to deal
with these children, with this population, and to have realistic
expectations. That took a while.''

Gronewald agreed that certain personality traits are necessary in
order to be a good teacher at Recovery High. "I think you have to have
a sense of humor,'' she said. "These kids are very therapy-wise. They
know how to dig. So you have to be a pretty strong person not to
respond to that, to stand back and realize where they're coming from
and what they're doing. You just have to really care about them and
believe in them.''

I sat in on one of Karla Schultz's classes, during which she passed
out copies of several short pieces of writing to the seven students in
the classroom. (Classes are small at Recovery High, but this was
unusual; some of her students were away on a field trip.) Schultz asked
them to take turns reading aloud. A boy named Juan read the first three
paragraphs easily, but a few of the other students read slowly and
haltingly, stumbling over easy words. Yet when Schultz began asking
questions about one of the stories, the students were eager to
participate in the discussion, and some of their comments were right on
target. They weren't exactly discussing Shakespeare, but at least their
minds were getting a workout.

"A lot of people have this idea that these are a bunch of dumb
students here,'' Schultz told me later, "but it's quite the opposite. I
actually think they're much brighter than the average student. You
probably know about dropouts, that they have higher IQs than students
who stay in school. In some ways, I think that's part of the reason why
they've gotten to the point where they're at.

"They may not be highly educated,'' she continued, "but they're
really smart. We've got some really intelligent students, some really
creative people who can just blow you away sometimes with what they
know and can do, with very little training. The stuff that comes out of
them--if you could just direct it somewhere!''

Two weeks before I visited Recovery High, the Albuquerque school
board had agreed to give the school $24,000, which, along with the
extra $100,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, would allow it
to stay open until May 25. The board, however, made it clear that it
would no longer subsidize the school beyond the roughly $110,000 it
receives under the state school funding formula. "If we don't have some
substantial funding in place,'' Hayes told me, "then we're looking at
probably having to close.''

Still, Hayes was optimistic. Several state legislators had vowed to
sponsor bills that would change the method by which the state pays for
alternative schools, which would direct more funds to schools like
Recovery High. If that didn't work, they promised to earmark money
specifically for the school. "We will bail them out if we have to,''
state Sen. Ann Riley said.

In March, however, the legislature failed to pass the
funding-formula bill, and $150,000 set aside for Recovery High was
vetoed by Gov. Gary Johnson, a conservative Republican who was elected
last November. The school was running out of options. "It looks like
we're going to have to close down,'' a resigned Hayes told me. "There's
just no funding available.'' On March 20, Hayes met with district
officials, who told her that although the school's fate wouldn't
officially be decided until the end of April, she should assume the
worst. Barring a miracle, the school would have to shut its doors.

"I'm in shock,'' Hayes said. "It's tremendous sadness. It's almost
incomprehensible. Anyone who's ever come here is always amazed at what
we do. But I feel proud that we kept it going as long as we did and
that we helped so many kids. Our most important job now is to do the
best we can for these kids, to get them into other schools, and to
close down the school with integrity.''

I couldn't help but think back to my conversation with Ted Nichols,
Suzanne Baca, and Heidi Mobbley. I had asked them, "What will happen if
Recovery High has to close?''

"If this school wasn't around,'' Ted said, "there'd probably be 60
kids out on the streets ditching school right now, probably robbing
your house. That's the way I look at it. That's why this school is so
important.''

"When I first heard that this school might be closing,'' Heidi told
me, "I was really angry. Because it seems like my whole life, everybody
was always giving up on me. I never had anyone on my side. But you come
here, and everybody's on your side. Everybody is there to help
you.''

"I don't understand,'' Suzanne said, "why the school board would
want to close down a school that keeps kids in school, keeps kids off
drugs, and keeps them out of jail and off the streets. I just don't
understand that.''

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